A 58-year-old woman has been given a conditional discharge after admitting failing to complete an income tax return and pay a £875 fine despite warnings.

Shem Heather Allanson appeared in court on Thursday after being arrested by police on a warrant and spending time in custody.

She initially refused to speak to magistrates, but then read from a piece of paper saying: ’I am a living woman. You are trespassing upon me.’

She claimed that the Isle of Man Courts of Justice were trying to force a contract and that she had been ’kidnapped’ and ’incarcerated’.

She said: ’I require you to desist and restore my freedom.’

After refusing to enter a plea to the tax offence, magistrates entered a not guilty plea on her behalf.

Allanson said: ’I’m not Ms Allanson. I’m not a legal fiction. I’m a living woman. The income tax division doesn’t have a contract. You are using coercion with menaces to try and force a contract. You can’t act on my behalf. I don’t wish to make a plea. There is no case.’

A trial date was fixed for February 11 and Allanson was told she would be remanded in prison until that date as she had not responded when asked if she wanted to make a bail application.

However, after spending further time in custody downstairs at the courthouse, Allanson asked for her case to be called back on. She initially said she would enter a guilty plea under duress but was told this was not acceptable and any guilty plea would have to be of her own free will, otherwise the not guilty plea would remain.

She then entered a guilty plea.

The court heard that Allanson had failed to submit a tax return for the period ending April 5, 2019.

In September 2021 she was given a further one month to file the return but had failed to do so and had also failed to pay a fine of £875.

In court she claimed she had thought that the income tax liability was only when she signed the form so she had not signed it, believing it was not a contract.

She said she had declined two summons’ that were sent, in a way she thought had been lawful, so she said she was shocked when police had come to ’bash my door down’.

Magistrates reminded Allanson that the order to submit the income tax return and pay the fine was still in place.

She agreed to pay the £875 fine at a rate of £200 per month.